The best native advertising is not about overt selling. As pointed out by Paul Lewis, director of editorial innovation at APN, the success of Forbes, The Guardian and the BBC on this front rides on the back of strong content and transparency.

“The cleverest use is not so much to push your products and services. It is to support your brand through quality credible content.”

Instead, innovative companies value thought leadership and the opportunity to talk to customers in a way that reflects well on their brand – and, further down the lines, on their products.

The benefit to brands? They get more depth/scope than editorial budgets might allow for typical (unpaid) coverage. But in order to strike a win-win-win for client, publisher and reader, it must be interesting in its own right. In an ideal world, it would even compel a reader to return.

“If it’s sitting on the Herald website it has to be content they would engage with anyway.”

Lewis says the Herald is working out rules of engagement as well as design and formatting for its own native advertising offering to be rolled out soon.

To date, content partnerships have included collaboration with the likes of Flight Centre, Discover America and Tourism Australia, which often include commercially driven microsites attached to nzherald.co.nz. The Discoveramerica.com editorial series included key homepage placements, editor’s picks and a specific USA hub page. Links to the Discover America site were included in each story, and social media coverage added another layer to the campaign. A different hub was created for Tourism Australia, with ambassadors recruited across the categories of food, culture, nature, shopping to create content for web and print.

While there’s very little empirical research around the effectiveness of native ads as yet, users are more likely to click on native advertising content than banner ads (duh) and a recent IPG study found a third of respondents would share a native ad with friends or family.

And with the explosion of mobile, the opportunity to reach large audiences is only growing. As PSFK’s Piers Fawkes tells the Content Strategist: “On mobile, you’re reading emails, you’re looking at Twitter, but you’re not scanning Google when you’re waiting for the train.”

FURTHER DOWN THE CONTENT MARKETING FUNNEL – CONTENT THAT CONVERTS

That’s not to say content related to your company products and services don’t have a place.

But Brendon Livingstone, marketing and communications manager at Equinox IT, says that type of content comes in further on, once you’ve engaged people and they’ve become part of your ‘tribe’ or community – it sits in the middle of the marketing funnel rather than the top.

He distinguishes between the two types of content marketing:

Content to attract

Blog posts (think useful, not salesy)

Social media

Targeted emails

Videos

Content to convert (into marketing leads)

Webinars

Ebooks

Presentation events

CONTENT MARKETING COLLABORATION

At NZTE, content has become a team sport, according to channel director Tim Parkman. Staff are no longer just content producers, but content facilitators, collaborating across the organisation to create content.

The more focused the content, the better it performs (to the tune of 500 percent more engagement), and one way NZTE has come up with original and relevant content is to call on its own experts – researchers, customer specialists and market specialists.

When it comes to amplifying reach, look to partners to help spread content. What organisations do you work closely with, and what organisations have relevant audiences?

NZTE is also testing Outbrain, a recommendation engine that displays related content on other sites, to drive traffic to its own content.

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On Monday, Whittaker’s launched its latest novelty chocolate-lolly mash up with a chocolatey answer to retro bakesale treat coconut ice. The Coconut Ice Surprise chocolate has a twist though, 20c from each block goes to Plunket – a charity which New Zealanders agree is a worthy cause. However, to relate the chocolate to the charity, Whittaker's has built the campaign around baby gender reveal parties, causing a backlash from the public who argue gender norms have expanded beyond blue for boys and pink for girls.

Genius From Elsewhere

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With over 10,000 fires occuring in South Korea residential homes every year, Samsung Fire & Marine Insurance has created a flower vase that doubles as a throwable fire extinguisher. The hope is it will raise awareness to the public safety issue of home fire safety.

2

Advertisers have stopped buying ads on YouTube after their ads appeared on children's videos where pedophiles had infiltrated the comment section.The New York Times investigates the comments.

3

The internet has been up in arms about a supposed 'Anti-LGBT' emoji, featuring a rainbow flag alongside the "no" symbol. However, according to Time, the emoji causing offence is actually "an unfortunate implementation of the standards that govern how text is displayed on our device".

4

This year, Super Bowl audiences were treated to a 45-second video of Andy Warhol eating a Burger King Whopper. It was certainly a campaign unlike any before, but did it work? Adweek takes a look.

5

As of 1 March, Queenslanders will be able to include one of five emojis alongside their licence places. The options—the laughing-crying face, the winking face, the sunglasses face, the heart-eyed face, or the classic smiley face—are courtesy of Personalised Plates Queensland.

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Why we like it: Infomercial-style ads take us right back to the glorious days of old when we were sick – but not too sick – home from school and got the sought-after opportunity to watch daytime TV. There was literally nothing greater in an eight-year-old's life. So for that reason, these ads get a big tick from us. There's humour, and, despite what often happens when radio hosts venture into a visual format, it doesn't miss the mark.

Who's it for: House of Travel by the in-house team

Why we like it: Who doesn't love when brands bring back a break-out star from one of their earlier campaigns? To be completely honest, we didn't recognise Lucy on first glance, but after a quick trip down memory lane, we placed her as Miss Lucy from that singing and dancing retro campaign House of Travel launched more than a decade ago. We like the continuity of this ad and watching a man choke on his drink after a snapback from a woman doesn't hurt either.

Who's it for: Joblist by Badger Communications

Why we like it: Sonia is a dead-set hero. We are introduced to her glamorous, visor-wearing face peering out from behind a freshly-levelled hedge and the next thing we know she's no ordinary arborist. We watch Sonia as she looks into that shrub's soul and reveals the schnauzer-shaped masterpiece of her own creation. We never knew we needed someone with Sonia's skill set in our lives, but now we know we do. Thank you Sonia for showing us the light.